2 Vital Factors to Improve Strategic Focus

Around 50% of company strategies fail (Candido & Santos, 2015), which is startling given the time, energy and resources companies pour into their development. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that a 2018 Gartner study found that 56% of executives believe that time spent on strategic planning is wasted.

So, what’s the cause of this? In a word…focus.

In a World of Opportunity You’re Defined by Your Focus

In a business landscape that is more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous than ever we could perhaps make the assumption that we’d be limited on choice. This isn’t the case, in fact, we have more opportunities, more information, and more data than ever. But this can create a tyranny of choice.

You might have experienced some of the symptoms:

• 150-page customer or employee research reports that tell us everything you could ever wish to know about those that matter most to your company. But at the same time tell you nothing about what matters most.
• Competing opinions and priorities across your executive team; often subjective and based on anecdotal evidence or specific data points picked out of a bigger context.
• The feeling of being more disconnected than ever from what customers and employees need or want.
• A strategic plan that’s beginning to run to dozens of initiatives, a fraction of which get accomplished.

If you have experienced any and all of these, you’re probably keen on a solution. In our work and research, we’ve found there are two critical drivers of strategic focus.??

"The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do" - Michael Porter

Two Key Drivers of Strategic Focus

1/ Use a Clear, Purpose-Driven Framework

A well-clarified company purpose should serve to inspire and motivate, while simultaneously building alignment and providing a practical executive decision-making tool.

At Ne-Lo, we’ve developed our Purpose Framework through our work and research with 100s of companies, ranging from ASX-200 listed to family-run and from start-up to over 100 years old. It consists of 4 distinct layers each of which serves a very deliberate organisational function and all of which interrelate to form a compelling overall narrative.

• Inspirational (Shared Belief) Layer – What is the fundamental belief that inspires your company? This is the layer that provides an emotional connection for your employees and customers. Your Shared Belief shouldn’t mention your industry, services or products - it is an overarching, out-of-industry belief.?
• Aspirational (Vision) Layer – What does your company aspire to do or be? Your business’ Vision is the difference you want to make in your specific industry. It should still be high-level and big picture. It is not a strategy or goal and may not necessarily be achievable, but it’s something that’s exciting to aspire towards.
• Strategic (Mission) Layer – How will your company get where it aspires to? What will you do, or are you doing, to work towards your vision? Missions are often product and market specific and should both inform your business strategy, ensuring it remains aligned with the overall purpose.
• Behavioural (Values) Layer – How does everyone in the company agree to behave along the way? Your company values are the agreed way of being, individually and collectively. They are how people in the company want to be at their best. Ultimately, they guide the actions and behaviours that inform your company's culture and brand.?

While having these layers articulated is important, the way you go about clarifying them is critical to overall connection, alignment and buy-in, which brings us to our second key factor.

2/ Bring the Voice of Customers and Employees into the Boardroom

Whatever stage of strategic planning you’re in, the aim should be to move the conversation from subjective opinion to objective insight as much as possible, in order to be confident about and aligned on the focused initiatives you will pursue. To do this requires very targeted and specific insights from the people who matter most, whether that be customers, employees or other key stakeholders.

In the age of big data, it’s not uncommon to have multiple 150-page reports telling executives everything they could possibly know about customers and employees, while also telling them nothing. It is rare to have concise insights that build confidence around what matters most. Achieving this requires the following steps:??

• Be clear on exactly what strategic questions you’re trying to answer, or what strategic hypotheses you’re working with.
• Identify which key audience or audiences are best placed to give us answers or insights to these. This could be customers, employees, other key stakeholders or specific subsets of any of the above.?
• Design and launch the most appropriate research based on Step 1, Step 2, your budget and your time. This could be quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods or perhaps the answer is available through previous research or relevant case studies.
• Analyse the data specifically with step 1 in mind. This sounds simple but it’s important to be ruthless - don’t get dragged into including everything that was found, although this may well have value in a future context.
• Bring the insights into strategic decision-making.

Following these steps will provide a clear external perspective as an objective lens for decision-making, building alignment and confidence around focusing on what matters most.?

A Model to Bring it Together

Combining these two drivers in a traditional strategic planning cycle would look something like this:

In Summary

In a world of almost endless data and more opportunity than ever before, there’s little wonder that many strategies are running to dozens of initiatives. Unfortunately only a fraction gets accomplished.?

But, when you have a clear purpose framework and that brings the voice of customers and employees into the boardroom, it allows you to conduct your strategic planning objectively, enabling aligned and confident decisions around what to focus on and - critically - what not to.?

That’s why our own mission here at Ne-Lo is to support leaders worldwide to become focused on what matters most to those who matter most to them.

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Have you found a way to successfully focus strategy on what matters most in your company? Comment below.

About the Author

I’m Ross Hastings, MD of Ne-Lo, a specialist Management Consultancy that brings the voice of your customer and employee into the boardroom to develop focused company purpose and strategy. Through our ideas, models and services, our goal is to support companies to be more aligned, informed, and focused on what matters so they can become the place people love to buy from and work for. Download the latest version of our?Purpose Framework eBook.